[.915] Sleeping on Beta 3 until Beta 4

from Elemental Forums

I've started probably 4 different games, and the one I completed I played as Oracle Ceresa. The one I completed was thoroughly enjoyable, although I relied heavily on the mass poison spell (can't remember the name) to wipe out armies much more powerful than me. 

I haven't found another faction with as much power as an underdog. Not only the mass poison spell but the numerous elementals created from the various shard sites, made it uniquely powerful. 

Karavox seems ok, but with diplomacy being unpolished i'm not sure if I can overcome all of the other factions who hate me now.

The Tarth are interesting in that they can avoid monster combat, but I was unable to overcome the other factions.

Has anyone else won a non conquest victory, or is that just the easiest path to win at this stage of the game development?

 

5,431 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

I have won an alliance victory after wiping out all Empires, and outgrowing the Kingdoms on Ridiculous, but think it is pretty much impossible to do so on Insane.  I've also won a Master Quest victory in .914. 

The thing is, in both cases, I could have easily conquered the remaining nations.  You can't really achieve the other victory conditions, at least on the top difficulties, unless you have already conquered a bunch of people, or at least are able to do so.

 

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Tuidjy, reply 1

The thing is, in both cases, I could have easily conquered the remaining nations.  You can't really achieve the other victory conditions, at least on the top difficulties, unless you have already conquered a bunch of people, or at least are able to do so.

 
End of Tuidjy's quote

 

Yeah. I think the military tipping point can happen early enough, and probably will if you get any significant pressure from the AI, that the other modes of victory turn more into "I would like to try getting an alliance victory rather than grinding them all down" instead of "I can't quite push the conquest victory, so I'll have to shift gears and go for Master Spell"

 

Although, I suppose that is what the "no conquest victory" condition is for.

Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

It would be so sweet if differing victory paths supported different play styles.  I remember someone complaining that his 4x game was more like a 3x.  Civ5 touches on that when you have to choose early on whether to expand (ruling out a social victory) or not (making defense and diplomacy more important than military build-up), and FE has the potential to implement this nicely.  Interested more in the exploring aspect of the game?  Then funnel resources into the master quest victory and have that be incompatible with conquest/expansion (your military would have to defend against interlopers while your ruler hunted for the keys to ultimate power).  Diversifying research would probably be key, as much as having different inhibitors built into certain play styles.  But I cannot blame the devs for not wanting to further balance-test those victory paths against each other (with how many other complicated factors must be balanced).

This effort would make the gameplay more replayable, though--maybe we should revisit these kinds of design considerations once the critical balance is in for things like pioneers/outposts.  Until then, I'm trying to focus on simple fixes.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

I have never as yet finished a game due to bugs, massive slowdown, cheating AI or over powered monsters and/or enemy.  I came close to winning and finishing one game, but then the whole thing crashed.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top


I want to buy the game but I can't :'( . First have to see a garentee from Stardock that this game will not be affiliated with steam. As soon as I have that, they get my money.

 

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

If you mean a guarantee that FE is not going to become Steam exclusive, well then Frogboy already said that.  Steam will be optional.  All I hope is that any other Elemental strategy game or RPG will be Steam optional.